Charles Denham, one of the best known patient safety advocates in the United States and a former editor of the Journal of Patient Safety, has paid $1m (£0.7m; €0.9m) to settle US government civil allegations that he solicited and accepted kickbacks to influence infection prevention guidelines in a way that favored his sponsor’s product.

Recruitment agent is sentenced for faking locum doctors’ experience: Ross Etherson, 34, has been sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for 12 months, for enhancing the CVs of doctors without their knowledge while working at the London recruitment firm Midas Medical Recruitment. Seven locum doctors (mostly applying for senior house officer posts) were employed in Lincoln and Sussex hospitals on the basis of Etherson’s misleading documents. There was no evidence that patients suffered clinically as a result of the fraud, and hospitals released the doctors from their contracts where necessary.

Zulfiqar A Bhutta says that criminal sanctions are necessary to deter growing deliberate research misconduct, which can ultimately harm patients. Julian Crane disagrees: he doubts that sanctions will have any deterrent effect and worries that criminalisation would undermine trust

Recruitment agent is sentenced for faking locum doctors’ experience: Ross Etherson, 34, has been sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for 12 months, for enhancing the CVs of doctors without their knowledge while working at the London recruitment firm Midas Medical Recruitment. Seven locum doctors (mostly applying for senior house officer posts) were employed in Lincoln and Sussex hospitals on the basis of Etherson’s misleading documents. There was no evidence that patients suffered clinically as a result of the fraud, and hospitals released the doctors from their contracts where necessary.

A nationwide sweep led by the Medicare Fraud Strike Force has led to charges being laid against 243 people accused of submitting fraudulent Medicare bills totalling $712m (£450m; €625m), the new US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, has announced. Forty six of the accused are licensed medical professionals.

A vaccine researcher in the United States who admitted to fabricating and falsifying HIV vaccine research results has been sentenced to 57 months in prison and ordered to repay $7.2m (£4.6m; €6.5m) to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funded much of his work.

A vaccine researcher in the United States who admitted to fabricating and falsifying HIV vaccine research results has been sentenced to 57 months in prison and ordered to repay $7.2m (£4.6m; €6.5m) to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funded much of his work.

The trial of the worst ever medical fraud case in the United States has ended with a Michigan oncologist, who made false diagnoses and unnecessarily treated hundreds of patients, receiving 45 years in federal prison.

Last year The BMJ launched an international campaign against corruption in healthcare. A single article was the spark: a personal view about the endemic culture of kickbacks to doctors in India (doi:10.1136/bmj.g3169). The campaign received widespread support from Indian doctors and the media, and it seems to have led to some positive change, if not yet enough. In an unprecedented move India’s then health minister acknowledged that corruption was a big problem. The government set up a special committee and has banned gifts to doctors and conference sponsorship by drug companies. The Indian Medical Association is working on a new code of medical ethics for private hospitals. And the Medical Council of India, which regulates India’s doctors, has committed itself to act against any doctors reported to have received kickbacks.

An entire Chicago hospital operated on kickbacks, buying referrals of elderly patients who had no medical reason for admission, then billing Medicare and Medicaid for unneeded investigations and stays, say charges filed by US attorneys against five administrators and six doctors.

A Michigan neurosurgeon could face 10 or more years in prison after the US federal government accused him of billing Medicare and commercial insurers for $33m (£21m; €27m) while performing sham lumbar spinal fusion surgeries.

A general practitioner who was sentenced to 18 months in prison after admitting to defrauding the UK tax authorities of £185 000 (€255 000; $285 000) has been struck off by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.